Sight Unseen | Page 9

that we were somehow involved in it, we were rather silent. Sperry asked one question. however, "Are you certain about the time when Miss Jeremy saw what looks like this thing?"
"Certainly. My watch fell at five minutes after nine. When it was all over, and I picked it up, it was still going, and it was 9:30."
He was silent for a moment. Then:
"The Wellses' nursery governess telephoned for me at 9:35. We keep a record of the time of all calls."
Sperry is a heart specialist, I think I have said, with offices in his house.
And, a block or so farther on: "I suppose it was bound to come. To tell the truth, I didn't think the boy had the courage."
"Then you think he did it?"
"They say so, he said grimly. And added, - irritably: "Good heavens, Horace, we must keep that other fool thing out of our minds."
"Yes," I agreed. "We must."
Although the Wells house was brilliantly lighted when we reached it, we had difficulty in gaining admission. Whoever were in the house were up-stairs, and the bell evidently rang in the deserted kitchen or a neighboring pantry.
"We might try the servants' entrance," Sperry said. Then he laughed mirthlessly.
"We might see," he said, "if there's a key on the nail among the vines.
I confess to a nervous tightening of my muscles as we made our way around the house. If the key was there, we were on the track of a revelation that might revolutionize much that we had held fundamental in science and in our knowledge of life itself. If, sitting in Mrs. Dane's quiet room, a woman could tell us what was happening in a house a mile or so away, it opened up a new earth. Almost a new heaven.
I stopped and touched Sperry's arm. "This Miss Jeremy - did she know Arthur Wells or Elinor? If she knew the house, and the situation between them, isn't it barely possible that she anticipated this thing?"
"We knew them," he said gruffly, "and whatever we anticipated, it wasn't this."
Sperry had a pocket flash, and when we found the door locked we proceeded with our search for the key. The porch had been covered with heavy vines, now dead of the November frosts, and showing, here and there, dead and dried leaves that crackled as we touched them. In the darkness something leaped against, me, and I almost cried out. It was, however, only a collie dog, eager for the warmth of his place by the kitchen fire.
"Here's the key," Sperry said, and held it out. The flash wavered in his hand, and his voice was strained.
"So far, so good," I replied, and was conscious that my own voice rang strange in my ears.
We admitted ourselves, and the dog, bounding past us, gave a sharp yelp of gratitude and ran into the kitchen.
"Look here, Sperry," I said, as we stood inside the door, "they don't want me here. They've sent for you, but I'm the most casual sort of an acquaintance. I haven't any business here."
That struck him, too. We had both been so obsessed with the scene at Mrs. Dane's that we had not thought of anything else.
"Suppose you sit down in the library," he said. "The chances are against her coming down, and the servants don't matter."
As a matter of fact, we learned later that all the servants were out except the nursery governess. There were two small children. There was a servants' ball somewhere, and, with the exception of the butler, it was after two before they commenced to straggle in. Except two plain-clothes men from the central office, a physician who was with Elinor in her room, and the governess, there was no one else in the house but the children, asleep in the nursery.
As I sat alone in the library, the house was perfectly silent. But in some strange fashion it had apparently taken on the attributes of the deed that had preceded the silence. It was sinister, mysterious, dark. Its immediate effect on my imagination was apprehension - almost terror. Murder or suicide, here among the shadows a soul, an indestructible thing, had been recently violently wrenched from its body. The body lay in the room overhead. But what of the spirit? I shivered as I thought that it might even then be watching me with formless eyes from some dark corner.
Overwrought as I was, I was forced to bring my common sense to bear on the situation. Here was a tragedy, a real and terrible one. Suppose we had, in some queer fashion, touched its outer edges that night? Then how was it that there had come, mixed up with so much that might be pertinent, such extraneous and grotesque things as Childe Harold, a hurt knee, and Mother Goose?
I remember moving impatiently,